Private cops get permission to ticket

Illinois Supreme Court rules subdivision police can detain drivers

January 25, 2013|By Steve Schmadeke, Chicago Tribune reporter

Image of justice (Tribune illustration)

The homeowners associations responsible for managing subdivisions across the state have the power to enforce their own traffic rules through a private security force, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Friday, overturning a lower-court ruling that found they could be unlawful.

Former DuPage County prosecutor Ken Poris sued LaSalle County's Lake Holiday Property Owners Association after he was pulled over for speeding in 2008 by a vehicle with flashing lights.

A uniformed officer wearing a badge and duty belt took his driver's license and Lake Holiday membership card back to his squad car and wrote him a $50 speeding ticket. The man wasn't a police officer but a homeowners association employee with little police training and no state certification.

Last year, an appeals court found that the association could not stop and detain drivers for violating homeowners association rules. The court found that Lake Holiday could be found liable for Poris' false imprisonment claim and that the association's use of amber-colored flashing lights on its squad cars was unlawful.

But the Illinois Supreme Court on Friday reversed each of those findings, ruling that Lake Holiday was allowed to enforce its bylaws against residents and that courts "generally do not interfere with the internal affairs of a voluntary association."

"We can discern no logic in allowing a private homeowners association to construct and maintain roadways but not allowing the association to implement and enforce traffic laws on those roadways," Judge Robert Thomas wrote.

Poris, who asserted that only sworn officers had the authority to pull over drivers and that the association police were also stopping and ticketing drivers who did not belong to the Lake Holiday association, said he was disappointed with the opinion.

Poris said he believed the ruling expanded the definition of probable cause, making it easier to stop someone on private property. "Now every homeowners association can basically set up their own enforcement group and those people are allowed to make stops," he said.

Lake Holiday's attorney Bruce Lyon said the association, which encompasses 2,000 single-family lots, was pleased with the ruling.

"They're happy that the court has agreed that they do have the ability to allow them to keep the area safe for all of the families and kids who live there and not allow people to speed with impunity," he said.

He said the association has not enforced the speed limit for about a year as the appeals process worked its way through the courts. While the case was a first for the Supreme Court, Lyon disagreed that it would make it easier for drivers to be pulled over on private property.

"I believe what this ruling really does is reiterate the rights of a private association to contract with its members when those members agree to those rules," he said.